Overflow crowd bids farewell to young man killed in crash

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There wasn’t enough room in St. Anthony’s Church to hold all the people who wanted to remember Tony Adamo Friday morning.

“He was just an amazing person,” said friend Heather Moore, who’s known him since grade seven. “There’s never anything bad to say about him…(He was) so talented, I’m just going to miss him.”

Hundreds gathered at the church, six days after his fatal motorcycle crash — and 7,000 people reportedly attended the wake Thursday, where there were long lineups at the funeral home during visitations.

Three doors to the church, on Booth St. at Gladstone Ave., were open and people stood on the steps listening to the one-hour service. Around two dozen people gathered under umbrellas on the sidewalk.

Emily Hubert, who’s known Adamo since elementary school, said she got to the church 40 minutes before the service began so that she could get a seat.

She wants him to be remembered for “his smile, and his all-over energy.” Adamo was one of a kind, she said, because “there’s not a lot of people who could be friends with everyone like that.”

Paramedics found Adamo, 21, around 2:30 a.m. last Saturday and pronounced him dead at the scene with a head injury after he lost control of his motorbike and hit a culvert head on in Barrhaven.

Friends said Adamo was at a party last Friday night and had been drinking. Ottawa police said alcohol and speeding were both factors in the crash.